


A Little Flaky on a Good Day

by jdjunkie



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode Tag, M/M, legacy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-13
Updated: 2011-01-13
Packaged: 2017-10-14 17:41:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/151790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdjunkie/pseuds/jdjunkie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daniel is confused about many things in the aftermath of the padded room, his relationship with Jack included.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Little Flaky on a Good Day

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is Jack and Daniel friendship, or Jack/Daniel UST (or pre-slash I suppose, if anything between these two can ever be pre-slash). Danged if I know what it is. It just ... is.

It was dumb. There was no Goa’uld in his closet. That didn’t stop him from opening the doors and checking though. Just in case. Never could tell when he was likely to get a little flaky. He had history in that department.

Daniel shifted on the floor, crossed his legs and leaned back against his bed. His head thumped with a dull ache. If he was sensible, he’d climb right up onto the mattress, pull back the covers and sleep for a week. It was early-hours-of-the-morning late and he was exhausted. He really wanted to sort through what had happened, from the Linvris chamber to the padded room. Maybe then he could begin to put it behind him.

He’d left the Mountain without speaking to anyone after watching Janet inject the protein into Teal’c’s  IV. It should have been a great moment for the team; they were whole again. But Daniel felt a man apart. Jack’s eyes never left the floor throughout the whole procedure and Janet was uncomfortable around him.

As Daniel turned to leave, Sam caught his eye. She smiled and Daniel was pretty sure she was about to ask him if he wanted to grab a coffee ... talk. He didn’t. He also didn’t smile back. Just shoved his hands deeper in his pockets and walked away. He never ceased to be amazed at his own ability to be an utter prick sometimes. He regretted cutting her off like that. Sam always wanted to make things right. She was the team’s natural buffer between an angry Daniel and a stubborn Jack, or a stubborn Daniel and an angry Jack. It worked, to an extent. There were lines drawn when it came to what she could and couldn’t say to her CO. But she generally got her point across in her Sam-I-am quietly persistent kind of way. Teal’c was a different kind of buffer. One raised eyebrow was usually enough to bring Jack and Daniel into line without another word being spoken. But Teal’c was still in the infirmary, recovering.

Teal’c had been ill, whereas Daniel had been insane. Apparently.

It was easy to see why the team and the doctors had come to the conclusion about his mental health so readily. Little flaky on a good day, just this side of lunatic on a bad one. He didn’t really blame them, given the evidence. But it did make him wonder how the others viewed him. _Really_ saw him.

Teal’c respected and admired the scholar in him. He encouraged and mentored the burgeoning soldier, and he quietly shared his grief over Sha’uri in a painful, never-to-be-talked-about way.

Sam cared for him like a brother, heroically bit her tongue when he turned into a sarcastic asshole, shared his wonder at the universe and gave him enough space to be the solitary, semi-widower he was.

He could categorize his relationship with Sam and Teal’c as personally familial and professionally respectful.

He never had been able to categorize his relationship with Jack at all. It was sharp and difficult, laced with a guarded affection that was one step away from devolving into hurtful conflict or evolving into ... something else, something unquantifiable that kept him awake at night after missions that took them both close to the edge of their understanding of their complex friendship. This had been one such mission.

In their own different ways, Sam and Teal’c loved him. Jack loved him, too. It was just that sometimes, even now, even after everything they’d been through, Daniel wasn’t sure Jack liked him very much.

In turn, Daniel wasn’t sure they knew _he_ loved _them._ For a communicator, he found the right words hard to come by when it involved those he was close to. He hadn’t really had much practice. It was easier to live within himself than share who he was with others, and it had served him well. Until Sha’uri.

He pulled his knees up together and wrapped his arms around them.  His closet contained half a dozen dweeb jackets (as christened by Jack, who failed to understand how anyone wouldn’t want leather in their collection), a dozen knit shirts, pants in assorted dull shades, and one red top which stood out from the others like a sore thumb. _“Carter helped me choose it. Said your wardrobe needed an infusion of something that wasn’t a brownish shade of brown. Happy birthday.”_

Nope. There was no Goa’uld in his closet, just a bunch of dowdy, ill-fitting clothes.

He yawned, mentally wrung-out but physically restless . He knew he wouldn’t sleep if he did go to bed, even though he desperately wanted to give in and needed the rest. He didn’t want to work either.  The mysteries of the Linvris required further investigation. Something in their history of fighting the System Lords could maybe help with Earth’s battle, too, but right now, he had neither the energy nor will to put in the effort.

Well, screw it. The SGC would just have to cut him some slack. He was, after all, a recovering whack-job.

He stretched out his legs and pushed one closet door closed with his foot, then the other. A shower, a good book (non-academic) a bottle of something red and of good quality and perhaps that would see him through the night.

He was halfway to the bathroom when the bedside phone rang. It was two o’clock in the morning. Good news never came at two o’clock in the morning. Teal’c. Something had happened to Teal’c ...

“Hello?” He snatched the handset from the cradle, expecting to hear Janet on the line, telling him he should really get back to the Mountain, that Ma’chello’s little buggers had left behind one last, nasty surprise and Teal’c was desperately ill.

“Did I wake you?” Not Janet; Jack, sounding tired and wary.

Daniel sat down on the bed with a thump, his heart racing. “No. Is it Teal’c?”

There was a moment’s silence. “Is what Teal’c?”

“Is he sick? Had a relapse?”

“Not that I know of. He was fine when I left the infirmary ten minutes ago. Why?”

“Then why are you calling?”

“To see if you’re okay. You didn’t hang around. After. And don’t use the F word if you’re not.”

Daniel took a second to process what Jack was talking about. “In that case, I’m fucking average, thanks for asking.”

Jack huffed a tentative laugh down the line. “Not the F word I had in mind.”

“Well, I’m not ‘fine,’ so at least I didn’t insult you by saying I was.” He didn’t bother reining in the snark.

“Daniel ...”

“Look, Jack. It’s late. I have a raging headache, and before you ask it’s not a migraine, so there’s nothing to fear on the schizophrenia front.”

“Hey.” Now Jack was pissed. Daniel didn’t blame him, but he didn’t care much either.  Christ, this was such a fucking mess. “We screwed up. _I_ screwed up. I get it. I just wanted to know that you were as close to all right as you could be. If you want, I’ll get off the line right now.”

And that was the trouble. Daniel _didn’t_ want him to get off the line. There was something ridiculously necessary about the sound of Jack’s voice, Jack’s concern, even though Daniel didn’t welcome it.

Daniel sighed, knowing it sounded defeated and weary. “I’m not okay, but I’m also not about to do something stupid or quit.”

“Well then, that’s about as much as I can hope for.”

Daniel shuffled further onto the bed and leaned back against the headboard.  He took refuge in keeping things on a work level. “When do we debrief?”

“Tomorrow. Hammond hasn’t set a time yet. Said he wanted to make sure everyone was fully fit for duty. I think he’s going to order an urgent re-examination of Ma’chello’s stuff at Area 51 under Carter’s jurisdiction.  See if the initial look-see missed anything that might be of use to us.”

Daniel shivered. He could still hear Ma’chello’s voice in his head. Could still feel the hopelessness as the medics pumped him with drugs that dulled his brain but not his fear.

“I saw Sha’uri,” he said, before he realized he’s said it.

“When?”

“In Mental Health. In the padded room. I knew it was the medication but ... she seemed so real.”

“I’m ... that’s ...”

Daniel almost smiled. So very Jack – wanting to offer comfort or reassurance but not having a clue what to say.

“It’s okay. Just the mind playing tricks. But just for a second ...” _I could reach out and touch her, hold her and believe I could begin to make everything right._

 “God, Daniel.” The anguish in Jack’s voice was almost Daniel’s undoing, but his anger and resignation was still warring with his ability to hear anything like an apology.

“Look. Jack. You believed I was insane because I acted like I was insane. End of story. I don’t want to hear your rationalizations and justifications, okay? There’s too much going on in my own head for me to deal with that too. That conversation will have to wait.” He was tired. He was _so_ tired. He wanted this call to end, he wanted Jack to stay on the line, he wanted ...

“It’s not like you to want to put off the difficult stuff, Daniel. I’m starting to think fucking average doesn’t begin to cover it.”

 _It doesn’t, it really doesn’t. Want to know what’s really bugging me? What has been driving me out of fucking mind, if you’ll pardon the pun?_ Daniel gripped the phone more tightly and ground out, “I saw Sha’uri but I called out for you, okay? Repeatedly. Her face, her ... beautiful, _beautiful_ face, my _wife,_ was in my mind, was offering me comfort in the depths of my, my, despair, but it was your name I screamed when they injected me. When they locked the door. Yours.”

Wow. He had no idea he was going to say that. He had even less idea what it meant.

The silence down the line was heavy.

“I guess ... you wanted to believe we don’t leave our people behind.” Jack said, quietly, the pain behind the words stark and piercing. “That _I_ wouldn’t leave you ...”

“And yet,” Daniel spat back.

“And yet that’s something I’ll have to live with. But since we’re not having that conversation right now, I’ll just put it out there and leave it at that.” He sounded angry and hurt and confused. _Well, join the club._

Crap.

Why was nothing with Jack ever straightforward? Shouldn’t friendship be an easy thing? A nurturing, solid, unquestioning thing? Why did this have to be so hard?

“I can come over. If you want.” The offer sounded half hopeful and half reluctant.

 _I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what I feel. I don’t understand any of this._

“It’s okay. You should stay with Teal’c.”

“Fraiser was talking about releasing him in a couple of hours on condition he kel-no-reemed.”

“That’s good. You should make sure he does.”

“I will.”

“Good.”

This time, the silence felt different. Daniel was saying all the right things and Jack was responding in exactly the way he should.  So why did it feel as though what they were saying wasn’t coming close to what needed to be said?

“Daniel. About Sha’uri ...”

“Daniel closed his eyes, gripped the phone until his knuckles turned white. “Don’t use the F word, Jack,” he whispered.

“We will ... fucking well discover her whereabouts.”

From somewhere, Daniel found the will to smile. “Not the F word I had in mind.”

Daniel could almost feel the curve of Jack’s lips against the receiver and see the way the lines around his eyes crinkled as he gave into the smile.

Jack’s voice turned gentle. “I’ll find her for you, Daniel. And we’ll talk about the rest later. When you’re ready.”

Daniel scooched down the bed and turned onto his side, curling up. He tucked the telephone into his neck as comfortably as he could. The tiredness was finally overwhelming him.  A few minutes and he’d be asleep.  Damned if Jack hadn’t been right; he really did have a calming effect on stressed-out people. Even confused, hurting stressed-out people. “Do you ... have anywhere you need to be until Teal’c is released?”

“Not if I’m not coming over there, no.”

“Would you mind just ... staying on the line. For a while.”

“I can do that.”

Daniel knew he wasn’t imagining the relief in Jack’s voice.

Somehow, some way, they always managed to start to find the way back to each other.

 

ends


End file.
